It all starts with U-Haul

Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.

Once we had decided to make the move, our task list suddenly became massive. So following the advice of ol' Lau Tsu, we just got started. First thing was the sell or rent decision on our Falls Church home. This was harder than it seemed, but ultimately calmer, pragmatic heads prevailed and we decided to rent on both coasts. To find a property we first turned to Zillow because of its ease of use and it's price. Zillow works well, but we ultimately downloaded our own copy of the Realtor.com app based on the recommendation of our friend and national real estate trends guru Jonathan Smoke. Shameless plugs aside, we used the inter webs to find our new pad in 4S Ranch San Diego and by all appearances it worked! I say by all appearances because even though we've signed on the dotted line, dolled out some serious cash and shipped all our worldly belongings to California, we've never actually seen the place, much less set foot in it! What could go wrong? But I'm getting ahead of myself, because as usual, it started with U-haul. 

Neighbors and friends know that I'm a big fan of the u-haul trailer. In fact, my buddy Chris and I rent trailers from FC U-Haul so often they're considering a frequent renters program for the two of us! Anyway, last trip we used the U-Box pods to pack up and store our "essential" items, so naturally I turned to them again. This time the goal was to box up everything we own, stuff it into pods, ship it west and then unpack what we need when we find a place. That's the key, U-Box is a moving and storage solution wrapped into one, or in our case, eight manageable pods.

Our timing was such that  had to decide on a moving/shipping/storage solution before we knew exactly where we were moving to. U-Box proved to be perfect for us because we ultimately had the boxes shipped to the local U-box facility in our part of San Diego where they sit, securely waiting for our arrival. We could use them like storage units out there, but now that we have an address, we'll unpack the lot when we get there.

Our next adventure begins - San Diego or Bust!

Head West Young Man is a phrase I've heard and planned to live by most of my adult life. I always intended to follow that advise and explore the western US, but somehow life got in the way.

Returning to the DC area in 1989 after a year abroad I had no idea I'd stay for more than two decades, find my love, raise a family and build a career. But that is exactly what happened and I had no plans to uproot the family to pursue that fading dream. We were so happy in Falls Church City...our roots were growing deep.

But then life got in the way again. Amelia's migraines had gotten so bad over the past few years that she was missing so much school and life that we had to try something. Drugs, diet change and other protocols weren't working. And then my company opened a new office in San Diego and my boss was supportive of the idea of trying a change of environment. So here we go! We've bit the bullet, packed our gear and are headed west.